


Fate

by tinysweetscat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, other characters are mentioned too, to some extent, vaguely set in canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-29 04:37:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17196653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinysweetscat/pseuds/tinysweetscat
Summary: Keith had always clung onto the concept of soulmates-someone who would understand him completely and he could love wholeheartedly. But when it turns out that his soulbond is uncreciprocated and his soulmate hates him, he thinks either fate messed up real bad or he did. After all, Lance McClain doesn't have Keith's mark, does he?





	Fate

**Author's Note:**

> For Voyager,  
> Sorry for taking so long ^^' I'm not very good at heavy angst but I did try to put some angst in here. Hope you had a good Christmas, have a great year and enjoy!
> 
> P.S. I gave Adam the last name of Waqas to fulfill my Pakistani Adam headcanon :D

For as long as Keith could remember, he had a pair of glowing blue wings on the inside of his wrists, one on each and facing him. Growing up, he had heard about soulmates from his father and how they were people who matched your soul perfectly that you would love them with all your heart. Some people fell in love with their soulmates while others kept them as platonic partners. Some people even had multiple soulmates-though that was rare.

The only tragedy of soulmates was that they were not always reciprocated, though most unreciprocated pairs would love each other eventually anyway. Soulmates would always find a way to each other as fate would not keep them apart. Sometimes, they only knew each other for a short period of time, sometimes they would meet online instead of in person and sometimes, they would only be thrown together once but there were never soulmates that did not meet. And even if they met once, they would immediately recognize the other. Soulbonds manifested in many ways; from timers to telepathy, there were millions of different manifestations. Keith was glad his were where he could see them clearly whenever he wanted to.

Keith had always loved the idea of having a soulmate, especially after his father died during his firefighting job. Regardless of how many foster homes he passed through, he at least had the reassurance that, one day, he would find someone who he would love unconditionally, someone who would understand him. There were many people who mocked and jeered at him in the foster homes as he was constantly moved for being too afraid, too shy and (when he realized that none of them wanted him) too angry.

He got into many fights for all sorts of things, but there was nothing that made him as vicious as those snide remarks that his soulbond would be unreciprocated and his soulmate would hate him. He would watch his wings carefully, imagining what kind of person his soulmate might be. Quiet? Loud? Tall? Short? Sweet? Sharp? He decided it didn’t matter, he would love them regardless. (Though, later, when he realized that it was only ever guys that he found himself crushing on, he hoped that his soulmate would be a guy too.)

Still, at the suggestion of one of the therapists that he was sent to, Keith started wearing gloves to cover up his soulmark. That way, nobody could see it and he would be able to protect himself where he was most vulnerable. He would hide his soulmark from everyone, with the promise to himself that the only people who got to see it were truly worthy of knowing how special the soulmark was. The mark itself may have been unremarkable artistically-it was even quite cartoonish-but its importance was too great for anyone looking his way to be able to see it. In this way, he consoled himself for many years. The only people to see his soulmark before his soulmate were Takashi Shirogane and Adam Waqas-the former was the first person who truly cared for him after his father’s death and the latter was the second person as well as Shiro’s soulmate

-

One of the reasons Keith had joined the Garrison, other than Shiro himself, was that he thought maybe the wings of his soulmark indicated that he might meet his soulmate at the Garrison where he was aiming to be a fighter pilot. Not only did they ‘fly’ the ship, the logo of the Garrison in the posters pasted around his school had a pair of wings. Though, when Shiro disappeared years later during the Kerberos mission (and Keith had to force himself to not think about how he disappeared in the same way his dad had), and when Keith got himself kicked out of the Garrison for punching Iverson in the face, Keith figured that he might have lost his first chance with his soulmate. But, he also figured, as soulmates were fated, he would find them again anyway so he pushed that to the back of his mind as he searched for clues about the Kerberos crew. There was no way that they had died due to pilot error-Shiro was the best pilot the Garrison had seen in decades.

When Keith ended up in space with a 10,000-year-old princess of a dead planet, her advisor, some weird space mice, Shiro and three random Garrison cadets, he wanted to hurl himself out of the castle ship’s airlock as soon as possible. He didn’t have the chance to worry about never meeting his soulmate again until the war had ended-he had already figured out who his soulmate was. And, it was clear that his soulmate was not only unreciprocated, the guy hated his existence. For his soulmate was Lance McClain: extreme flirt, pilot of the Blue Lion (the blue of his soulmark made sense now, even if he had missed linking Lance’s blue eyes to the wings of the exact same color) and apparently his ‘rival’.

Shiro’s comfort and support was the only reason he was able to keep going, pretending that he wasn’t angry at the universe for ruining his chances with his soulmate (he wasn’t very good at keeping his anger in check and he knew everyone was catching on, though they didn’t know the root cause but he couldn’t tell them). He couldn’t help but think that maybe he was always going to lose the people important to him-his mom, his dad, Shiro, Adam and now Lance (though he gained Shiro again, it was at a high price). Or maybe the order was: his mom, his dad, Lance, Shiro and Adam; it turned out that Lance hated him for ignoring him during his Garrison years then forgetting him (but how was he supposed to remember Lance, when he’d been overwhelmed by the Garrison and its possibilities, when he had been shocked by the support of Shiro and Adam, when he had been searching for matching wings on wrists-never looking up to match the blue of his wings to a boy's beautiful eyes).

So, Keith kept quiet. Lance wasn’t his soulmate. Lance was never going to love him. Lance, as he found out later, had Hunk as his platonic soulmate. And if that broke his heart and his pillow became wet with tears on more than one occasion, well no-one had to know, except maybe Shiro. At least he still got to be near his soulmate most of the time, even though he pathetically participated in a made-up rivalry just to keep his attention. It would be ok.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr at @tinysweetscat!


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